


Sit back, enjoy the show.

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: Settle in and find your home [17]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Pepper runs a super-efficient company, Stark Industries has the best HR, Steve's PR team, hypercompetent women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 18:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12041487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: Matías likes getting to the office early. Always has. He figured out in university that his day just worked better if he rolled out of bed, stumbled through dressing, a breakfast bar and his first coffee, got dressed for whatever the day held, and then finished the mental work of waking up over his second coffee wherever he was meant to start his day - or at least nearby. It meant his brain got right into gear.So he's at the Tower by around seven-thirty, and gets his second coffee of the day from Dandelion and Driftwood.





	Sit back, enjoy the show.

**Author's Note:**

> Follows straight up after [Hop in let's go.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11591565)
> 
> . . . uh, I didn't mean for this one to be this long? But . . . it is this long. Don't hate me.

Matías likes getting to the office early. Always has. He figured out in university that his day just worked better if he rolled out of bed, stumbled through dressing, a breakfast bar and his first coffee, got dressed for whatever the day held, and then finished the mental work of waking up over his second coffee wherever he was meant to start his day - or at least nearby. It meant his brain got right into gear. 

So he's at the Tower by around seven-thirty, and gets his second coffee of the day from Dandelion and Driftwood. 

It turns out the woman there two days ago isn't the owner; the owner is actually a small, elderly but - what's the word? spry? - spry Chinese woman with chin-length iron-grey hair and exquisite taste in earrings. She also clearly loves people and is at least gossip-buddies with Yolanda, as Matías gets squinted at for a second before she announces that he must be Yolanda's new hire, introduces herself as Sylvia, and peppers him with polite and innocuous questions about where he's from and if he has family in the area. She's got just enough accent that Matías doesn't think English is her first language, but that's the only sign. 

As she's making his americano, another woman - much younger, but with obvious family resemblance, and dark purple streaks in her shoulder-length black hair - comes in carrying a couple boxes of supplies to tuck into the cupboard in the condiments trolly and behind the counter. As she rings him through, Sylvia gives him a thoughtful look and asks, "Do you drink tea, young man?" 

The younger woman says, " _Gramma_ ," in an exasperated but fond tone of voice, and her apparently-grandmother looks aloof. 

"I was just asking!" she says, as the younger woman theatrically puts a hand over her face. 

"How horrified are you going to be if I say I've had a cup of Lipton now and then when it's too late for coffee but I feel like I need a hot drink?" Matías replies, grinning, playing along. 

"Not horrified at all, dear," says Sylvia. Behind her, from her spot on the floor where she's stocking the straws, her granddaughter looks upwards as if for patience. "It just means I have to show you what you're missing. Remember to come down here from time to time, okay?" And she passes him his drink. 

As he heads down the two or three steps that separate Dandelion and Driftwood from the elevators, he hears the granddaughter say, "Gramma you do not have to evangelise tea to everyone." 

"Evangelism is all about good news, dear," he hears Sylvia say. "That's what the word means! I bring people good news about tea." Then the elevator doors close. 

He does have to buzz up, but the intercom's right in the elevator and the receptionist greets him brightly and totally waves away his disclaimer of _I know I'm here early -_ just as the elevator starts moving. 

It's fast, and it's quiet, and the weird thing is that it doesn't even have that "settling" feeling most elevators do when you reach the right floor. Matías wonders how you manage that. 

It turns out that for all he's early, it doesn't really matter: right now there's a group of people from basically all departments but _especially_ PR and Logistics, who are working a sort of compromise-shift, covering the gap between the time zones between Assam and New York, so that everything keeps moving smoothly for the big energy plant project. So the Assam-team have been here for hours already, and there's already the quiet susurration of a working office you'd normally get around nine-thirty or ten o'clock, even though it's not quite eight yet. 

The receptionist's name is Brenda - a bit older than him, white, mouse-brown hair pulled back into a bun and an overall presentation that says "I'm a professional woman working in a professional capacity but at home you'll find me in comfy jeans and a t-shirt and I only put makeup on for work" - and she waves off his second half-apology for being so early. "It just means you'll have a bit more time to look at your office as-is and make your list of anything you want Facilities to change," she says, briskly, keeping her headset on but leading him down the hallway to his right. 

Matías finds himself blinking. "An office already? That was fast," he says, and she smiles the proprietorial and slightly smug smile of someone who feels at least partial ownership of a particularly efficient system. 

"We work fast," she says, just to reinforce that. She unlocks the door with a small card she keeps on a curly band at her wrist, and says, "Voilà! Your packet's on the desk, and it has your card in it, along with instructions to program the lock to you-and-Facilities-only if you want to. Let me know if you have any questions, I'm not super busy around now, and otherwise Lorraine'll be by when she's in to show you around." 

Then she's gone, heading back to her desk, all before Matías has had time to kick his brain back into gear and actually take _in_ what he's looking at. 

The office is _really_ nice.

Everything is birch-wood and blue-tinged glass with bits of white here and there, something between so minimalist it's cold and stilted, and generally modern, but without bothering to fuss about style over function. The floor is a slightly darker wood with a couple silvery area rugs - under the desk and under the grouping of armchairs and low table. It isn't a corner office - because Stark Tower doesn't have corners. The wall that is in fact the glass outer sheath of the building curves slightly, and Matías can see the curve reflected in the floor. That's where the armchairs are. Behind them on one of the walls are a bunch of - well, calling them "built-in shelves" seems unfair, because that makes them sound clunky and intrusive. They aren't clunky and intrusive. But they are more or less shelves, and cabinets, and a few drawers. 

The desk is more or less L-shaped, creating a little square of office-within-the-office separate from the arm-chairs. Each arm of the L curves a little bit, and the ends of the desktop are rounded. There's a monitor set up, and Matías has no instinctive sense of monitor-measurements and what they mean but basically it's huge, with a small sleek dark grey rectangular shape on the desktop beside it that he figures must be the computer. He can't see a keyboard. 

There's a very neatly piled stack of a few largeish envelopes in the middle, with a note on what sticky-notes want to be when they grow up and make it big, and for a moment Matías lets the door close behind him and stands there, staring at it all and feeling impostor syndrome climb up his back and leap for his throat. 

This can't actually be his. There is no way he actually just got given this office, to do this job, in this company, in a role where apparently (and he had caught and understood the references to _team_ ) there were going to be enough people reporting to him that he actually needed to be able to hold meetings in his own office. There is no _way_ this can actually be real. 

Or, if it is real, there's no way it isn't a huge, huge mistake. 

Matías stands there with all of that for about five minutes, and then he shakes it off, crosses the room, drops himself into the extremely ergonomic chair and pulls the stack of envelopes over to see what's there. 

The note on the top is just a basic welcome, adding that they just went with a standard office set and he's welcome to talk to Facilities if he wants anything changed, and that someone would be catching up with him right away to do a basic familiarization, introductions, and walk-through. It said the rest was background and details on various stuff that he'd already talked about with other people, and on the Captain America product line(s) that were the first priority of the day. 

It turned out that one of the envelopes wasn't an envelope, but actually a large-ish touch-screened tablet in a case that looked like a leather folder if you didn't look too close. Once Matías opened the case, it also had a little luxury sticky-note saying that if he preferred to work in hard-copy then of course everything could be printed out as well, but that he would still need the tablet in his hands to link up with the ones everyone else used, that it was keyed to his fingerprints (any of them) which he had provided the day before, and one of the obvious programs once he powered it on would be the OS walkthrough if he needed it. 

Matías thinks _Jesus Christ Almighty_ , knowing that his internal voice sounds like his uncle, and opens the other envelope, which has a glossy printout of the SI Employee Handbook. 

 

The clock - which is a kind of nifty vintage-modern pseudo-digital clock that ticks the time away by flipping cards over - is just flicking to eight am when there's a tap-tap-tap on the door, and Matías startles out of looking through the handbook to say, "Come on in?" 

"Hey, another early-bird," says a woman's voice, as the door swings open. "Hi! I'm Lorraine." 

Matías had formed a picture in his head to go with Lorraine, from the moment Ofelia started talking about her through to a few adjustments when Yolanda mentioned the name. It had been of someone in her mid-twenties, white, probably blonde, conventionally attractive or at least trying to be, the kind of aerobic-weight-control-fit that kind of woman tends to be, all that kind of stuff. 

It turns out that out of all the details of his picture, all he got right was the age - he thinks. And maybe the race, but it's hard to tell, because she has the kind of olive undertone to her complexion and the kind of frizzy-curly hair that could mean Italian, or Ashkenazi, or eight different kinds of mixed-race, and probably a few others Matías doesn't know. There's probably the last important clue somewhere in her features, but he can't see it, so he's not going to guess. 

Other than that, she's short, and he's going to have to find out where she is in relation to body-acceptance and size-acceptance and all that stuff so he knows what out of _fat_ , _chubby_ , _plump_ or whatever he should or shouldn't think of when it comes to her. After dating his last-girlfriend-but-one for as long as he did, he leans towards _fat_ because he honestly _felt_ Justina's insistence that it was just a descriptor and didn't mean anything by itself, but that doesn't fly with a lot of people, and the last thing Matías wants to do is be an asshole. 

Just in general, really. But especially here. 

Lorraine's got a round face and rectangle glasses and she's honestly adorable. She's wearing a turquoise knee-length dress over white tights and her glasses match the dress, and her jewelry's all some kind of white rough semi-precious stone that Matías doesn't recognize. Her hair's back in a pony-tail but looks like it's about shoulder-length. The elastic's got a big white flower on it. 

She offers her hand without any hesitation, and Matías takes it. She's got the handshake that says she's not going to start the squeezing contest but that if he does, she's ready for it, and he suppresses a smile. 

If nothing else, he can see how this is the kind of woman who'd come in here and run right into Yolanda's office to announce that she'd solved a problem. She's got enthusiasm radiating from her like a sun. 

"Matías," he says. "It's nice to meet you." He gestures to the room. "Should I invite you to sit down, or - ?" 

She grins what probably counts as one of the cutest grins he's ever seen in his life. Her eyes scrunch up at the corners almost like an anime character and the grin gives her two dimples, one on each side. "Like the office?" she asks, and it's almost impish. She goes on without waiting for him to answer, "If it's any help, we actually pretty much all had the same kind of Moment when we moved into the Tower. The pre-Tower space wasn't anywhere near this nice, so we were all kind of left going 'are we sure this is _my_ spot and someone hasn't mixed things up - ?' So with that in mind, the bit about talking to Facilities is genuinely true." The grin turns into a smile with slightly lower wattage, one that invites you to smile with her. "Just because it's nice? Doesn't mean it's your ideal working space. And we're going for ideal working space, not winning décor awards." 

Matías decides to go ahead and file that under "absorb implications later", accepts the superficial fact that it does make sense, and inclines his head. "I'll definitely keep that in mind. It is a bit - " he looks around and gives a shrug that takes it all in and admits difficulty with words, finishing, "well, it's a lot nicer than my last one." 

Lorraine turns the smile wattage up again for a brief second. "Good! Now we can totally sit and talk here, or - " she does a little finger-gun gesture at his coffee-cup. "That cold?" 

Matías realizes that he's completely forgotten about his coffee, sitting on the desk, and says, "Actually, yeah, stone cold."

"Then the first stop in today's orientation will be the fuelling station," Lorraine declares. "Follow me?" 

 

Actually, it turns out it's not the fuelling station, it's The Fuelling Station. As in, that is in fact the name of the little café-bistro-bakery space about forty meters' walk from the Public Relations offices. 

Stark Tower - or Avengers Tower, or whatever: as far as Matías can tell, everyone here just refers to it as _the_ Tower, as if it's the only one they could possibly be referring to - is basically a city, or at least, Matías thinks, the downtown core of a city. Only a few people live there, or sleep there on any kind of a regular basis: the top seven floors are, in descending order, the Penthouse, the five private floors belonging to the Avengers (Hawkeye, Captain America, Thor, the Black Widow and the Hulk, respectively), and then what Lorraine refers to as "Avengers Lounge and HQ". 

"They don't really have names," she notes, "the floors are marked 'private recreational space', but we all know that's what they are." 

Then under those are the guest floors, two of them, which are more or less extremely expensive hotel suites, meant for visitors and guests or for times when certain kinds of employee are required for one reason or another to give slightly more than the usual eight hours a day, or are dragged in to the Tower on short notice. 

"Mostly StarkSec, Legal, or Upper Management," Lorraine tells him, as they sit down at one of the little booths tucked away to one side and a bit behind the service counter. "The company's actually pretty good about observing overtime and adequate notice and all of those things, but if you're Legal, or StarkSec, or you get promoted above a certain level, you basically sign a little rider that more or less says 'we may require you to show up with basically no notice beyond us telling you that we've got a cab on the way to pick you up and take you to the airport.'" She makes a face. "Haven't had any of those situations for a while, though, thank god. On the other hand when it does happen, the company does basically everything possible to make up for it, including the rooms here, so." She shrugs. 

All of those top floors are so restricted that even the housekeeping staff goes through more background checks and security procedures than most people who work at the Pentagon. "Plus," Lorraine says, "that whole area is run directly by JARVIS - Mr Stark's AI system. He doesn't decide to let you in, doors don't open, and there are rumours that if somehow you got in anyway there's direct and pretty lethal security measures." 

Underneath, the working floors start with R&D, with the most Restricted and/or Classified and/or otherwise Secret projects the closest to the top. "That's where you're most likely to run into Mr Stark himself, actually," Lorraine says, "because working on one project at once or using the same lab or workshop space for more than one project is something that happens to _other people_ , so he's usually got six or seven on the go. It's worth taking some free time to go walk around up there just to get a sense of how that area works, you know?" 

As you get more and more towards the ground, you get more and more into offices and areas where people who don't work directly for SI are more likely to need and be allowed to go, as far as Matías can sketch out in his head from Lorraine's explanation. It's also where things get more and more like a small vertical city: there's a library (three floors worth), several gyms and other exercise places including pool areas, a daycare and preschool, a bunch of scattered atriums and indoor garden spaces and "quiet conversation nooks", a medical clinic, a pharmacy, a massage therapist, a salon and aesthetician, a dentist, an optometrist and, near the bottom, a "convenience store" that sounds to Matías more like a cross between a Whole Foods and an upscale mini-WalMart. 

Lorraine grins again at what has to be his slightly bemused expression. "There was a survey, when the Tower was being rebuilt," she said. "Actually there were three, since Ms Potts was apparently really determined that everyone would at least look at it and give one response. All based on 'what would it really be useful to have here?'" She shrugs. "And I mean, SI pays well, but it's still Manhattan - a _lot_ of us commute, some people pretty fair distances. It's less official but I do know a bunch of people even technically home-school their kids, except what they do is bring them here and set them up in one of the library rooms and take turns supervising and helping out. It's working really well. And of course, there's all these." She gestures to the café-bistro. 

There's places like it (or even more fully restaurant-like-spaces) scattered through every floor except the active lab/R&D spaces - "They do have to come out of their labs and go down a floor or two, the poor darlings," Lorraine says, dryly - most of them independent, some of them chains, none of them _exactly_ a formal "Stark Industries Food Services" type thing, but all of them designed to meet employee wants and needs. Some of them are vegan, some of them are kosher, two are a hundred percent gluten free. Everyone who works in the Tower apparently has a certain amount of credit with all Tower food places loaded onto their employee card per month, but all the outlets also take cash and credit and debit and anything else, so nobody could really feel limited. 

"That's all in the handbook," Lorraine adds, as Matías nods. "And there are outside patients for the dental clinic and so on - not a lot of them, but a few, and that part of the building the hallways are all open."

The Fuelling Station is the café-bistro closest to the PR offices. There's also an office-kitchen inside, with fridge space and basic kitchen stuff, and from about 9-5 there's an intern or three who can be sent for coffee and baked goods, like general minions - Lorraine's word. "But honestly," Lorraine says, "Yolanda really encourages people to first off _take_ their statutory breaks, and secondly get out of the immediate office-space with them. And she _will_ nag. She is a huge fan of work-life balance."

"I got that impression," Matías admits, and Lorraine smiles. 

"Did she make snarky comments about people living in their offices?" she asks, innocently. 

"Just the one," Matías says, smiling back. 

"Yeah she's pretty stern about it. And she'll hit you with studies and statistics that talk all about how overworked people make dumb mistakes and how if you can't regularly get your work done in a standard work-week then you need more hands on deck, and trying to be all those hands is just ego bullshit - her words - and lack of people management skills. Just so you're forewarned." She winks, then shrugs. "So we all tend to come out here. The food's great anyway, and so is the view." 

Matías can't argue with that. Honestly the view from just about anywhere in the Tower that has a window is pretty amazing. The rebuild after the Chitauri had been run through with design contests and sponsored building projects and building beautification projects, and the result made for a pretty fascinating skyline. 

"You can keep track of what credit you do or don't have in your employee account," Lorraine goes on. "Which will also let you access the company-only social media stuff, but I'm absolutely sure you have people on your team who can give you a better tour of that than I can. It's pretty active here - being HQ means that almost everything we do all day ends up at least partially covered by our NDAs." She rolls her eyes, but there's no resentment to it, just gentle amusement. "Other facilities get a lot less use out of it." 

Matías notes that she's sort of hit a pause, and gestures to his coffee. "I'm slow with this kind of thing," he says, "so I can get a to-go and follow you if - ?" he sort of lets it trail off. 

She checks her watch. "Everyone else is probably here by now," she says. "I don't mind hanging out, getting you settled in _is_ my morning, but if you're up for meeting your team, let's go." 

Matías tries not to find that phrasing terrifying. 

 

The first person Lorraine introduces Matías to is Deb. 

"Deb" is Deborah Levy, a woman in her late forties with mid-dark skin, wide-set eyes, short salt-and-pepper hair in whatever the grownup version of a pixie-cut is because Matías trying to imagine anything associated with this woman being called something like "pixie" just doesn't work. She has a well-tailored but - at least compared to Lorraine and Yolanda - subdued outfit, consisting of a pair of slightly wide-leg slacks over low-heeled shoes and a fine black cashmere turtleneck. She's more striking than conventionally attractive, but she _feels_ vivid and magnetic as she looks up to say _come in?_ in response to Lorraine's knock on the frame of the open door. 

And at first meeting Deb kind of feels like having a bucket of cold-water and insecurity dumped over his head. 

Lorraine might be trying to get the most intimidating person he's apparently in charge of over first, or maybe it's just coincidence, because Deb's office is a natural destination from the department's door. Maybe it just has to do with what Lorraine knows about people's schedules. But through no fault of her own, Deb immediately makes Matías feel incredibly awkward and exposed and threatens to bring back that last bout of impostor syndrome. Not that he lets it show, but it's still there. 

The very first emotion he has, meeting Deb Levy, is a pressing desire to apologize. Because in face of her, sitting behind her desk in her own somewhat smaller office, Matías definitely feels like a poacher. Like he's come in and taken a position that should have gone to her. There is no way he should be getting - 

Except that as Lorraine says, "Hi Deb, this is Matías, we - " Deb interrupts her. 

"Oh I _heard_ , thank fuck - oops, sorry, language," she says, as she gets up and steps away from her desk to offer Matías her hand. Her handshake is firm, her hand dry and warm. "It's really good to meet you. Oh, you already have coffee, fantastic - come sit down?" 

Her office is a contrast of rich woods and green and blue pastels, except for several framed pieces of art (or possibly "art") that are pretty obviously full of "my kid did this at school!" (or pre-school or arts club or whatever) specifically chosen to treasure. The small round arm-chairs are a darker blue and Matías' legs are almost too long for them. 

"Overwhelmed yet?" Deb asks, her own warm drink of choice (Matías can't tell what it is, might be really milky coffee or might be strong tea or hell it might be something else) in a mug with "#1 Mom" on it. Matías mock-solemnly wobbles his hand out in front of him. 

"Treading water," he says.

"Deb's been coordinating and facilitating the team so far," Lorraine says. "She's one of our best." 

And there, there was the guilt again. And then again it skids out on the rocks of Deb's response. 

"I've also," she says, giving Lorraine a Tolerant kind of look, "got a seventeen-year-old daughter who just had a baby, as well as a ten-year-old son, a husband who apparently likes my company, not that I know how he can even remember, and a nice home I like seeing occasionally. In Queens, even. I took point on the Captain America projects because Yolanda gave me sad imploring looks," she goes on, now more to Matías than to Lorraine, "and I have residual maternally-instilled guilt for not having managed to be president or something equally absurd."

That has the sound of something skating quite close to some personal stuff, so Matías lets it skim by instead of saying anything, leaving that kind of response until he gets to know her better. Deb says, "Trust me - Matías?" and the question on the name is asking if that's what she should call him, so Matías gives a gesture of assent. "Yolanda offered me your job. Yolanda begged me to take your job. I don't want it. Not that you should let that scare you," she adds, almost seeming to belatedly realize that might not be the most reassuring thing to say to a brand new hire. 

Lorraine's started giggling, so Matías decides it'd be okay to grin. "I'll admit, I was a bit worried - " he starts, but Deb waves it off. 

"Please," she says. "I wasn't passed over, I _passed_. I am happy to work on the launch, to help through all the transition you need me to, and even to collaborate on future stuff but I do not want to _run_ this show. I've got enough." 

Her tone of voice is pretty convincing, and lets Matías sort of reclassify this as an institutional power-house going _oh thank god someone_ else _can take this for once_. And, in the small signals of in-office status and politics, Deb's office is - he thinks, but maybe it's just furniture giving the impression - a bit smaller than his, but on the other hand it's also right next to Lorraine's - she'd pointed that out when they came over - and right across the hall from the impressive doors into Yolanda's anteroom. Matías tentatively pencils her into unofficial third-in-command. 

"Lorraine's introducing you to everyone?" Deb asks, and when Matías confirms, she says, "Good, when she's done send me a text, we should be able to sit down sometime after twelve-thirty and I can help you turn that huge bundle of files on there - " and she gestures to his tablet, which he's been carrying, " - into some kind of coherent and triaged guide to what's going to happen. He meeting Captain Rogers today?" 

Matías feels his brain go _erk!_ \- like someone trying to make a corner at high speed and skidding out, maybe right into a safety rope. 

It's not like he's stupid: he has thought about how obviously this means he is actually going to meet and at least superficially _know_ Captain America. He just hadn't realized that it might start today. Which maybe is a bit stupid, but - 

So he's relieved when Lorraine shakes her head, her lips thinning a little bit in an expression much more of worry and resignation than annoyance, even though - given the timeline - he probably shouldn't be. 

"Day after tomorrow," she says, and sighs when Deb gives her a Look. 

"Really?" Deb asks, incredulous, and Lorraine nods. 

"Captain Rogers is currently _Unavailable_ ," she says, with a stress that makes both the capital U and the emphasis clear. "I went to reschedule for tomorrow and JARVIS moved it to the next day. _While_ I still had the calendar open - while I was typing, actually. Which is a pretty clear indicator." 

Feeling lost, Matías glances between them, both eyebrows raised slightly in query. Deb glances upwards. 

"The JARVIS AI is a bit . . . idiosyncratic," she says. "Incredibly helpful, once you get used to him, but - "

"Mr Stark claims the acronym stands for 'Just A Rather Very Intelligent System'," Lorraine says. "And it's definitely _complicated_ , and Mr Stark's always been extremely blurry on what the parameters are. Nobody else can make sense of the code, at all, and Mr Stark won't explain. The upshot is, JARVIS sometimes . . . does things. Like Deb says, he can be incredibly helpful but - "

"Honestly it's creepy," Deb says, shrugging, then corrects herself, " - okay well maybe not creepy, it doesn't give you a skin-crawling feeling? But it's unnerving. I'm just kind of glad I'm not one of the ones he'll talk to." 

"Only certain people get actual interaction," Lorraine explains, before Matías can ask. "Like, the system will talk to them, and not just in Mr Stark's actual office. We have no idea what the parameters for that are, only it has nothing to do with company position, and once again Mr Stark is _zero_ help. _He_ just says JARVIS likes some people more than other people."

Both women have the expression that Matías sort of suspects is going to come up a lot in reference to Stark, a kind of tolerant, mildly exasperated amusement at something that's a bit annoying but not actually a problem, a sort of non-verbal sigh of _okay then, whatever_ of the kind that comes and goes without leaving residual frustration. 

" _But_ ," Lorraine concludes, "JARVIS does coordinate just about everything he has access to that he cares to, and the Avengers all store their stuff on Stark servers, so he's got their schedules and calendars." She shrugs. "And sometimes does things like spontaneously mark days off-limits. No idea why Cap is Unavailable - " 

"And little birds know, nobody'll tell us," Deb interjects and gets a glance, and acknowledges something in it Matías doesn't catch with a wave and a glance upward. 

"It's not really our business," Lorraine says, sort of aside, before going back to her thought, " - but if JARVIS is doing independently guided things like changing a meeting, it's usually because he knows something we don't." 

"'He'?" Matías asks, having caught the pronoun a few times in the explanation, and leaving the rest of it in the "put together later, when there are more pieces to the puzzle on the table". 

"Stark calls JARVIS 'he'," Deb explains. "And the voice the system uses when he does talk to anyone is masculine, so we've just gone with it. When he does, he sounds like the butler from some period novel." She shrugs this time. "Stark," she says, in a voice that clearly says, _what can you do?_ "Well," she goes on, "I guess that gives us another day to get everything absolutely ship-shape." 

She's pitch perfect for Yolanda's "silver lining" voice, as far as Matías can remember. 

They chat a little bit more, and then Matías shakes hands with Deb again and she says, "See you after lunch," before Lorraine leads him out. 

 

After Deb comes Bran, and Matías kind of feels bad for him for the name. There's no way kids at school didn't give him grief for that one. 

"It's Welsh," Bran explains, without prompting, as he and Matías shake hands. "Means 'raven', or that's what my mother tells me. It's a pleasure to meet you." 

The surname's Lewis. Other than his name, Bran's outwardly ordinary, the kind of person most marketing wonks think of when they think "everyman": the same age as Matías, more or less, white, a bit under six feet, brown eyes, brown hair, a carefully trimmed beard. The family pictures on his desk and on the wall imply he's married or at least permanently paired off, and he and his female-life-partner-of-some-description have what looks like three small kids and two huge dogs. They could be in a stock-photo collection: "happy, wholesome, middle-class family." 

His office conveys the same near-generic things, with the only obvious exception that catches Matías' eye being that the desk is a sit-stand model and that in place of the more comfortable conversation furniture in his office, or in Deb's, Bran has a square table the right height for standing at, with more or less the entire tabletop covered by what looks like the big brother, or possibly grand-daddy, of the Stark tablets everyone else carries around. 

Bran looks over when Matías does and offers, "I'm a visual thinker and I get restless." His little grin is a bit self-deprecating. "My wife tells people she has to arrange to have important conversations when we're walking the dogs, so she knows I'm listening." 

Talking with Bran ends up being the first conversation Matías has at Stark Industries that _doesn't_ involve feeling like he's a video-game character trying to grab vital game elements out of the air at speed. Bran listens intently through Lorraine's introduction, usually nodding while he does, and Matías notices that he doesn't invite them to sit down but it also doesn't feel any less comfortable or welcoming than Deb's office. It just feels like when you're talking in Bran's office, you stand. 

They finish up with Bran saying, "I'm just in here all this afternoon, so if you need something or want to go over anything after Deb's got you grounded, feel free - just come knock on the door. And don't worry if I'm pacing around, that's just me thinking." 

It's so normal it almost feels odd. 

 

Across the hall from Bran comes Julie, Julia Dante, who kind of feels to Matías like someone humanized a heron. She's all narrow bones and long-limbs, the kind of woman who _can't_ put weight on to save her life (sometimes - though hopefully not in Julie's case - literally) and whose odd kind of thin fragility seems to somehow get into their personalities so that they always seem like they're trying to make themselves even smaller. She's almost as tall as Matías, but you wouldn't remember it without work and she stands with her hands clasped and pulled in to her chest. 

Included in the framed degrees and certificates on her wall are several awards for design, and if she's nervous and more comfortable talking to Lorraine than directly to Matías, she's also learned to camouflage that pretty well - Matías only sees it because he's looking - and he can tell she's bright as hell. She's white, with unexpectedly green eyes, and her hair is a dark reddish brown and cut to frame her face in loose curls. She wears earrings made out of feathers and horn-rimmed cats-eye glasses. 

"Has he met Deb yet? Deb's amazing," she says at one point, glancing between Lorraine and Matías like she's trying to fill a lull so it doesn't get awkward. "Seriously if you can get her to stay involved in the project or any project, you absolutely want to, Deb makes everything better." Then her eyes go wide. "Oh! Has he met Captain Rogers yet?" 

"Day after tomorrow," Lorraine says and then when Julie's mouth makes a little O of surprise she explains, "Captain Rogers is currently Unavailable and JARVIS seems to think tomorrow's going to be the same." 

"Ohhhh," Julie says, and then her head tilts to one side. She looks thoughtful. "Well. I guess it is October." 

She says it like it's an aside, and like it explains everything. Matías looks at Lorraine, but she's already looking at Julie like she has no idea what Julie's talking about. When she catches Matías' glance, she shrugs. So at least he doesn't feel like he needs to scramble for clues for what the hell October could mean. 

Julie looks from one of them to the other, takes in the bafflement and says, "October was when - " and then she stops with the kind of hesitation that you get when you were about to say something you shouldn't but catch yourself, but not fast enough to keep it from showing, and looks at Lorraine in not-quite-panic. That one, at least, Lorraine seems to translate just fine. 

"He's been read in," she says, and Matías can hear the slight amusement in her voice; at just about the same time, like the thought arrives right in a tie with Lorraine's words, Julie kind of theatrically smacks herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand, the biggest movement she's made so far. 

" _Duh_ , Julie," she says, like she's scolding herself. "Of course you have, I'm sorry, that was a complete brain blank, I'm a moron. So October - Sergeant Barnes was selected for specific experimentation on or around October 3rd, 1943," she tells him - them, because she glances over to include Lorraine. Lorraine's expression takes on a veneer of _of course_ with a patina of resignation. "From the general POW population in the HYDRA factory in Austria. So." 

It takes a second, like a gear missing a couple times before it catches and bites, but then everything Matías has had dumped on him in the last something-like-forty-eight-hours clicks into place enough to grasp that: zeroes in on _in_ the War, in the POW period, when HYDRA was using the captive soldiers as slave labour, and that would mean selective experimentation whatever the fuck would mean, functionally, that October would be the month, or whatever, that Barnes spent being tortured and experimented on. 

The first time. 

Julie shrugs and turns back towards Matías. "My husband's an adjunct professor of history at NYU," she explains. "His dissertation was on the use of captive labour by HYDRA and the Third Reich during the Second World War. He's revising it for a book. Kind of a hot topic these days. Never really expected his work to have a practical effect on mine, but there you go. Fortunately I'm his alpha editor so I'd read it all and I have a good memory, because wow, hey, here I am. Basically," she concludes, "I can see October not being a good month for them. Trauma likes anniversaries, apparently. We might want to remember that in future." 

She puts a lot in the tone of voice there. Matías is impressed. There's both a kind of acknowledgement that nobody actually _told_ them so it's not like anyone could have actually kept it totally in mind and, you know, choose a different month for everything that was about to happen, but also another kind of acknowledgement of wow, so that timing is a _thing_. 

There's stuff ticking over in the back of his mind, of course. Has been all morning, will be all day - the front of his brain is just taking stuff in, but the backroom crew - so to speak - is already working. That's how Ofelia always put it. And on the one hand all of that goes back real quick and on the other he can also feel himself slot it into "not great but not the end of the world" - it's not like they can't figure out plenty of ways to make this fly that really don't need much involvement from Cap at all, if that's what works. 

"That and how many other things," Lorraine sighs, under her breath. Julie smiles slightly. It feels like, oddly enough, the moment's taken off the edge of her nervousness. 

"Get Mimi to run up a calendar, she loves that stuff," she says. "And if she sends me an email I'll even poke the manuscript and see what I can think of. I mean," and she tilts her head, "I assume you're going to introduce Matías Roy and Mimi and whoever it is they have right now." 

"Next stop," Lorraine confirms. "Okay," she corrects herself, "that's a lie. More coffee - at least for me - is the next stop and then down to the Spelunkers." 

Julie looks at her in sudden concern, enough that Matías has to hide a smile. "Are you getting enough sleep, hon?" she asks and Matías has to work even harder to hide the smile now. 

"Don't you even," Lorraine says, prodding Julie gently in the shoulder. "I've already got a mom, two step-moms _and Yolanda_ , you keep your frustrated maternal instincts for someone else." 

It has the air of an old little wrangle, and Julie laughs and waves as they go. 

 

They stop by the office kitchen for this round of coffee, although it turns out to come from an espresso machine. Not anywhere near as exotic as the one in Leo's office yesterday, but still pretty nice - restaurant grade, for sure. 

"Two step-moms?" Matías asks, figuring it for small talk given she's the one who said it aloud. He offers to make them both lattes, since the machine looks like one he can wrangle, and Lorraine takes him up on it. 

"My mom originally came from a really strict background," Lorraine says. "She says she wasn't unhappy with my dad, but then when I was about six we went on a Disney cruise and she met Tori when Tori spilled her coffee and Mom went to help her clean it up. Two months, a sexual awakening and a lot of crying later, Dad agreed to the divorce, Mom was moving in with Tori, my grandparents were never speaking to any of us again - and actually Mom's mom tried to get custody of me on the basis that Mom and Dad would both be detrimental to my morals, but the judge threw _that_ one out - and I suddenly knew the word 'lesbian' plus a lot of less polite ones and I knew that my dad would have my back if I punched someone in the playground. Then about a year later Dad started dating the lady who ran the daycare I went to." 

"So first and second grade were a little packed for you," Matías summarizes, flipping the steaming wand back off. 

"Everybody needs some good stories," she says, smiling her big smile again. "Wow, hobby or did you spend some time stuck as a barista?" She takes the latte, though Matías thinks the praise is a bit much. It's not like he did latte art. 

"Undergrad," Matías confirms. "Between that, work leftovers, showing up to every lunchtime event I could find, and when all else failed knowing how to turn beans and some spices into something that actually tastes like food instead of punishment, I managed to make it out only in debt up to my armpits, instead of over my head." 

Lorraine gives him a slightly wry toast-salute with the latte. "Alright," she says, "let's hit the Caves, then." 

 

Their real job-titles were things along the lines of _Online and Mobile-Based Social Media and Information Specialists_ , and according to Lorraine they were one of Potts' first major innovations, back in 2010. 

"Ever notice how we basically never have big social media fuckups?" Lorraine says, pretty baldly, as the elevator doors open onto the walkway above the huge bullpen space and its high ceilings. 

"Actually, yes," Matías admits. "And how you seem to be on any shit that comes out of the corners before most people even know what's going on - all of that." 

Lorraine looks really, really pleased at that. "So, technically it was delegated by my now-retired previous boss," she says, as she spreads her hands to present the scene, "but this is basically my baby. It's totally grown up and moved out and is way, way bigger than I expected, and also," she finishes, mock-solemn, "I take no responsibility for the nicknames. Those came from inside." 

She leans on the railing and looks a bit more serious. "My Spelunkers started as an HR initiative," she says, "in partnership with PR. I got to run with it because of Natalie Rushman aka the Black Widow. Ms Potts was _not happy_ that SHIELD was able to plant someone in the company like that, to put it _mildly_ , and she was absolutely adamant we make sure it could never happen again - them, or anyone else. Now as it happens, one of the things I knew from my personal life is that it's actually really, really hard to backstop a consistent social media presence and record over a span of years, especially if the people looking are people who spend most of their lives online." 

Matías goes to join her, looking out over the busy hush of the work-space. 

The design down here is kind of industrial chic: it's open, piping and some other things exposed, very airy, with marked out areas like little bull-pens and then some areas that are almost more like offices. It's a space where it's obvious people need to be in and out of each other's back pockets, looking over each other's shoulders. 

"Here's the thing," Lorraine says, conversationally. "Most people just use social media as an extension of their every-day lives. Sometimes it gets away from them, but that's still how they're thinking, that's how they see the world. Today's high-school queen bee might have seven accounts, from Twitter to Spotify, but she just uses these things to have her offline life. She doesn't live online. So you can count as pretty social-media literate in the technical sense and yet still have no real clue what goes on in what they're calling the deep web, or how to navigate and use its connections."

Matías considers that. "Okay," he says. "I think I follow you." 

"But that kind of person - the technically literate, but not immersed kind - tends to know how to make themselves look better to an HR hiring manager, so that's who gets hired," Lorraine goes on. "And sure, they know about Facebook and Twitter and maybe they even took the right courses at university but it's not the same.

"My best friend in high-school got _seriously_ into online fan-spaces," she goes on. "These were people who moved at least part of their lives online. Whole friendships, whole histories, whole social spheres that were completely based in the internet - based in text, based in text-centric spaces. They're the other way around: sure, those friendships might extend so that you went on to meet these people in the flesh. Some even got married. But this was their voluntary social world.

"I never quite got it," Lorraine continues, as Matías absorbs that and isn't sure what he thinks about it, "but just through her, I got a good look at the difference between the technically-literate-but-still-ordinary people, and the people who were in the spaces she was in, and how they thought about the programs they used and the social connections they made. And when we were looking at the backstopping stuff that SHIELD did for Rushman, and brainstorming ideas how to block something like it, I realized that my high-school b-f-f could have gone through this cover - and that it was mostly about how she thought about things, about people's history, about how connections work. I knew she could've because she _did_ sometimes - this was the late 90s, early 00s, it was a different internet, but there were still people faking at being other people, sometimes faking their deaths, all kinds of stuff. And I remember how they would end up coming to light and I could look at what SHIELD did for Rushman and I knew that Mandie could've taken it apart. Or at least, been a lot better at it than our people."

"Natural development of skills," Matías says, slowly, but Lorraine waggles her hand. 

"It's not even skills, so much as it's _mindset_. It's perspective. It's about how you think about people leaving a trail in their lives, and how you sort of assume that people are going to have multiple names and multiple selves in different spaces, the way that most people in the mainstream don't. Everyone in Mandie's world worked with pseudonyms, and sometimes people had six or seven, and that was fine with everyone as long as you weren't using them to mess with people - but because it was fine, people'd almost treat connecting the names up as a game. Figure out that MissCleo101 on Usenet is running, I dunno, a _Man from U.N.C.L.E._ fansite on Geocities." She glances at him and says, "Old hosting site. Dead now. But anyway, I _also_ realized it was really rare for those people to get into positions where they have much in the way of influence about this kind of thing, because they're not as good at looking good to HR. Or if they are, they're also not willing to do much to tip people off. I mean - that was a few years ago, it's a bit different now," she adds. "But still. This stuff has a hangover." 

She shrugs. "So long story short after a _lot_ of convincing, I got the go-ahead to try a range of test projects and they worked out better than I expected. And thus - " she gestures to the bullpen, "was a sub-department born." 

"Obviously not just investigating job applicants," Matías notes, and Lorraine grins. 

"Not even close. And like I said, I don't run it anymore, either - that's Freda's lookout now, but she's on vacation so you won't meet her for a couple weeks. Everybody wants to mine data," and she makes a kind of dismissive half-way jazz-hands wave, "but they want to do that because they can plug it into an algorithm and ignore it, because they think that's the answer to everything." 

She beckons him to follow her down the ramp towards the bullpen floor. "Us, not so much. I mean we've got that stuff, but that's all programs anyway. Doesn't really need people at that stage. The Spelunkers aren't focused on data - they're focused on _intel_ , which is a bit different. Plus, it got apparent pretty quick that while we could find stuff out this way, we could also use the same structures." 

"The viral campaign for the mobile technology suite," Matías says, remembering the wild-fire spread of the News that Stark Industries was going to do its own challenge to iOS and Android and whatever else. He'd been impressed. Here and now, Lorraine beams at him. "Did you guys really just send those five samples out there?" he asks. 

"Mmmhm," Lorraine says, smugly. "See, there've been a few times where one specific site operated as a huge gestalt for what turned out to be significant real-life action - basically, stuff got passed around on that site in a way that made it _way_ bigger than you'd expect. There was this podcast that went from basement production to global tours and a tie-in novel debuting at #1 on Amazon in less than two years, entirely due to genuine organic viral word-of-mouth, plus the last net neutrality go-around had aspects of the same thing, and some others. You can look it up in the system if you're really curious. Our people tracked those events and narrowed down the various hubs that resulted in the biggest moments of proliferation, and more importantly _why_ \- so that we were projecting intelligently instead of just replicating and expecting stuff to work the same, because it never does. And we picked the ones best suited to our purposes. Worked great. Freda was over the moon." 

Matías nods, turning it over. And he listens as Lorraine keeps talking, explaining everything with the gleeful suppressed pride of someone talking about a project that outgrew them. 

It really is, he realizes, just leveraging the real potential of the social networking, instead of using it to prop up existing networks. The Spelunkers - the name apparently being generated internally, because they were "spelunking" the deep web a lot of the time - were mostly just people who'd tossed out the idea that physical proximity had any bearing on how "real" a connection was or wasn't, tossed out the idea that geography and location were king and just relegated both to the same space as a lot of other variables, like what hours you worked or what kind of music you liked. And sometimes even ranked them lower, as after all it could matter a lot less that your new friend lived in Australia, and a lot more that you both loved Chinese pop music and were around online at the same time. 

When you actually _did_ that, it changed things. For most people, someone they'd met in person was much more "real" than someone who'd always been on the other side of the world. With the kind of person hired to be a Spelunker, they turned that upside-down: the guy living a floor down from them could be Ted Bundy, for all they knew, but they'd been in touch with their buddy Sergei in Sarajevo for ten years now, and knew everything about him. 

People would get nervy about "on the internet, nobody can see you, they can just tell you lies", but someone with the mindset this department looked for tended to be well aware that people could lie to your face, but that if you pushed the right _way_ on what people told you about their lives, asked and shared the right things, you could get as sure about the answers as you could talking to them one on one. 

Of course, there were plenty of people you'd come into contact with on the internet you couldn't do that kind of test on, but on the other hand, there were plenty of people in real life you shouldn't be sure of, either. Just because the guy you met at the local yoga class says he went to Harvard doesn't mean he actually did. Just because the woman you go to church with seems like one kind of person doesn't mean she's not another. If you thought about that too long, Matías thinks, you could get really paranoid. And with that thought, he also wonders if the proliferation of the department increased after Maria Hill came to SI. 

After all, this kind of mindset was probably a lot more natural to someone who spent at least part of their life overseeing missions full of people who didn't actually go to Harvard being sent to local yoga classes so they could build the backstopping they needed for an assignment. 

And when it comes down to it, it's actually hard to use the internet to fake having two kids for ten years to someone close to you - easy to fake at one remove, maybe, but then people start noticing you're never close to anyone. By the time you're talking about interactions, relationships that would make you any different from "some guy I met once in a bar" - make you more like "my coworker of twenty years" - well, at that point people start to notice little details that sound wrong. That seem off. That don't add up. 

And it can be even harder to lie, because the internet tends to give you hard-copy of everything. So they can go back and track the way the story of your fictional kids' lives just doesn't make sense, how the picture just doesn't add up. Face to face, well. 

It had never before occurred to Matías that it could be easier to fool people face to face than it could be when all people could see of you was your text on a screen. But then, he supposes, he's not the kind of person you'd hire to be a Spelunker. He is, admittedly, exactly the other kind. 

For the company, it turned out that this kind of thinking actually helped avoid seemingly unrelated things - like, for example, swallowing your foot on Twitter up to your knee. Because you learned to think of any internet space as being more like standing in a crowd than releasing something to a newspaper: there's no real hierarchy, and you're not that much in control. 

And that was true even if half your audience wasn't even close to as plugged in as the Spelunkers were - it's just how things turned out. 

It means there aren't one or two people minding the SI Facebook and Twitter-feeds: there's a whole team, and leading the team is someone with enough clout to make at least some of the decisions you need to be able to make in a heartbeat if you're going to keep up with the RTs. There are four official "responding" accounts and they all have names - none of which actually corresponded to the name of whoever was staffing the account at the time, but that, Lorraine noted, wasn't the point. 

"The point is, it's not SI the Faceless Corporate Entity?" Matías guesses, and Lorraine shakes her head. 

"You'd be surprised - the facelessness isn't the problem," she says. "All of the account names are plausibly unisex and none of them have face-pictures - no, it's . . . it's getting rid of the idea that The Company is answering, and making sure that it's clear that even if the employee is speaking on our behalf, it's _an employee_ who's _speaking on our behalf_. It's not some conceptual Avatar of Stark Industries. That doesn't exist. It's just 'Jenny' relaying what her boss said to say."

"Huh," is all Matías can think of to add. 

"It has an unexpectedly huge effect on how the interactions work. Some people get more belligerent," she notes, "but those are pretty much always the ones it wasn't worth doing much other than blocking in the first place - and the people who actually have anything to bring to an interaction get less defensive, like they page back in on the fact that they're just talking to some person at a keyboard who's got other people telling them what to do, and what that means." 

There's also multiple teams whose entire job is to surf and dig through hundreds of places on the web, and highlight anything they think needs some kind of attention - regardless of what it is. And then another set of teams to filter through the stuff that got noticed and see if anything's important right now. And those are the generalists: there's also specific teams whose job's to hunt for _specific_ mentions on specific topics, wherever they pop up. 

"This is another place where there's Avengers crossover," Lorraine says, as they make their way across the bullpen to the far side. "We track the Hulk and/or Dr Banner, for instance - anything and everything. But we also just hunt up anything to do with the new advertising release, and anything to do with the prosthetics projects - anything. And everything." 

She grins. "I know more than one person working in here who's almost totally unplugged at home these days, actually. They say spending the whole day getting paid to sieve through tech blogs and topic pages means they're really happy never to see another one when they clock out. But! That does more or less bring us to _your_ Spelunkers." 

They've crossed the bullpen, over to an area separated from the bullpen by glass walls that go about two thirds of the way up to the ceiling. Some of them have doors that close, some of them don't; some of them are frosted and some aren't. The one Lorraine walks over to is very faintly frosted but doesn't have a door, just an arch. When she knocks lightly on the wall a female voice from inside says, "Shit - sorry, hang on, two minutes and then Starfire has to go to class _anyway_ , super-sorry, unexpected ping!" 

Inside, Matías can see what appears to be a circle of computer work-stations with an office-chair in the middle. Each work-station has a narrow desk with two monitors, a keyboard-tray with a keyboard, and one of those tracker balls that are supposed to be more ergonomic than mice. It's obviously set up so that the person sitting in the middle can roll their chair from one to the other, and right now that person has her back to them and typing rapidly on the one in front of her. 

The thing is, the station in front of her is . . . orange. Everything about it is orange. The monitor frame is orange. The desk is orange. The keyboard is orange. The tracker ball is orange. All of it: bright orange. The others are grey, black, white, and blue in exactly the same way. It's very obviously meant to be colour coded. 

Over to one side is a different desk set-up: one desk with four monitors (in normal colours) and no keyboard or mouse-or-mouse-substitute that Matías can see. 

"Someone says they've been taking candids in Brooklyn," says another, new voice - this one of indeterminate sex, at least to Matías' ear - from behind them, making Matías and Lorraine both startle. The thin figure behind them looks guilty. "Sorry," the newcomer says. "I'm forgetting to make noise when I walk again." 

After about a heartbeat, Matías gives up on guessing gender. The person is a picture of exactly the kind of thin angular androgyny and soft but midrange voice that could be either gender accidentally being unidentifiable, _or_ someone working very hard and to great effect to make sure they don't visually align with either, and he's not going to find out until someone uses a pronoun. 

Also, a tiny part of him thinks irreverently, he's not entirely sure this person's answer to a query about their gender wouldn't be _goth_. 

It's a very tidy, elegant, respectable and neat "goth". The short black hair is very neatly styled, the multiple rings and studs for the facial and ear-piercings are all very toned down and silver and at most feature things like stars or in the case of several on the ears, crescent moons. The eyeliner is almost professional when it comes to crispness. The application on the black lipstick is flawless. The black nails look like a better manicure than you see most places, the black cardigan is almost as nice as Deb's black sweater, the black dress slacks are new and very nicely tailored, and even the boots would pass anybody's dress-code. 

The spiderweb tattoos on the neck and hands look to be really good artistry, too. 

But overall it's definitely the kind of presentation of someone who would have a mug that says, "So goth I sacked Rome". And might then explain to you that they mean the Visigoths under Alaric, just to make sure. 

"No, it's fine," Lorraine says, smiling in a way that's subtly more reassuring. "Matías, this is Ginger. They've just started working on this project," and that answers Matías' pronoun question, and puts this as _working very hard and to great effect to be this ambiguous_ , "since their predecessor went on unexpected paternity leave." 

"I'm the Shallow Web face," Ginger offers, although that doesn't really tell Matías much yet. 

"Ginger, this is Matías," Lorraine goes on, "he's going to be taking over the Captain America projects." 

Ginger's eyes widen and they straighten up a bit. "Oh, wow," they say, looking suddenly kind of awkward, hands going to their back pockets in the way you do when you're suddenly not sure what to do with them. "Hi," they say, and then seem to realize that handshakes might be a thing. 

Matías mentally pegs them as possibly not yet old enough to legally buy a beer and makes sure that doesn't show as he shakes their hand, because knowing that someone realizes you're that young always used to make him feel worse. 

"Um," Ginger says, their hands going back to their back pockets, "Roy's already in the conference room, I just came out to see if Mimi was done yet." They gestured over their shoulder to one of the rooms that does have a door that shuts - _and_ more opaquely frosted glass. 

"Yes! I'm done! Okay!" and Matías turns to watch Mimi disentangle herself from her workstations. 

Mimi looks in her late twenties, and also like someone who had to make some kind of peaceful compromise with her inner punk long before she got a chance to work for a company that didn't care that much, and by then was in the habit. She has on a knee-length grey skirt, ankle-boots, a tunic length sweater with a belt at her hips, and only a pair of half-rings in a snakebite piercing and one bar through the cartilage of her right ear would actually cause comment on an ordinary dress-code. Her hair's short and the darkest shade of red you can get and still call it "natural", and her makeup's just this side of actively alternative. 

None of it does anything to tone down the feeling that if she decided to, the woman could lead a riot for anarchy and ignore every single contradiction in those terms, at the drop of a hat. It just puts a veneer of "I am totally a professional and a bit flustered" on top. It's almost like she crafted it just to convey _I am actually so 'alternative culture' I can't get hired in my normal clothes so this is what I dress up as to go to work_ , on purpose. 

Matías clasps the offered hand. Her handshake is firm enough to preemptively make it clear that if he wants to go for a squeeze-off, she'll break his fingers. 

"Hi," she says. "I'm Mimi, and I'm also sorry about that. There's lemon-squares in the conference room?" she adds, gesturing. "By way of apology." 

Lorraine blinks at her. "Where did you get lemon-squares?" she asks, the tone suggesting they're friends. 

"I made them," Mimi says, as Ginger opens the door and they start to file into the room. She says it like Lorraine should already know. "Of course. You tell me I have a new project lead and I'm meeting them tomorrow, I make lemon-squares, this is an unavoidable outcome." 

"There's someone new so she has to feed them and it has to be special," says the person in the room, a tall young black man with a deep voice. "We're lucky she didn't make brandy-soaked fruitcake."

He's sitting at the table, and was obviously resting his head on his arms before they came in. He's also in a long-sleeved red t-shirt and jeans that have the distinctly rumpled look of someone having been in them for a lot longer than they planned, and possibly having slept in them unexpectedly. 

Lorraine's arms fold across her chest almost immediately, and just as fast, the young man - presumably Roy - is holding his hands up. 

"I didn't - there was a 4chan thing, okay?," he says. "Unexpected, I had to deal with it. It was important, I promise. I wrote a report. And it's done! And not going to happen again any time soon. Probably. I'm pretty sure." 

"We already talked about this," Mimi says, giving Lorraine the look that says all her sympathy is with Lorraine here. "I told him regardless, next time I'm flagging Yolanda." 

"I have only pulled a forty-eight once before now _all year_ ," Roy protests, like he's pleading a first offense. 

"And if it's really a need-to-do situation then I'm sure she'll be fine," Mimi replies. "But I'm still flagging her, because this is number two." 

"You know," Roy says, with a sigh, "just because you've heard her _the company pays for your labour it does not own your life_ speech seven times - " 

"I never slept here for a week," Mimi replies, and it's slightly more serious and slightly less bantering, and instead of more protests Roy holds his hands up. 

"After we're done this meeting you're going home," Lorraine tells him. "And take a lemon-square, I bet you haven't eaten properly either." 

"I went and got Fuelling Station breakfast," Ginger volunteers, settling themself in one of the chairs. "So we've all eaten properly. And I also totally vouch for this being a thing he needed to run with." 

"Fine, I accept it, I'll look at the report later. _Anyway_ , Roy, this is Matías," Lorraine says. "Matías, Roy."

Matías reaches over to shake Roy's hand; this one's the dry-skinned light handshake of a man who mostly doesn't touch people much, Matías is betting. You couldn't call Roy classically handsome, but he's got what Ofelia would call an appealing smile, and she'd probably rhapsodize about his eyelashes. He wears a Marine Corps ring on his right hand and one of those plastic-y-band bracelets with something printed on it on his left wrist, but Matías can't read what it is. It's blue. 

"So. Now that everyone's here and you've met them," Lorraine says, with the voice of someone who's building up to an exciting moment, "it's time to tell you that this this," Lorraine spreads her arms to indicate the occupants of the room, "is the guiding hand behind probably the most intensive and involved viral marketing campaign . . . ever. And I'm introducing them to you because what they've been marketing for us is, basically, the Winter Soldier." 

After a beat Roy breaks the second of silence with, "She's been planning that line for weeks. I can tell." 

Matías is actually grateful. He isn't sure that he can actually assimilate what Lorraine just said, but banter, he can do. "I was giving her a solid appreciative silence," he replies. "In respect for that." 

"See," Mimi says, " _that's_ charm. You can take notes. This team," she goes on, not bothering to wait for Roy to reply, and dropping into a more formal register, "was one of the earliest measures put in place as part of Stark Industries' framework designed to prepare potential responses to domestic reactions to Captain Rogers' new - well, at the time, new - living arrangements." She taps a pen Matías hadn't realized she was holding on the table, and makes a gesture with it that's half a presentation and half a shrug. "One of the things we'd discovered really works well is if you get ahead of controlling the narrative. This time, we decided we'd go one step further and _produce_ the narrative." 

Of the stuff that she outlines next, Matías figures that he understands about half, but it's the half he needs to understand: that the team was created with the idea of being the first out there to pull bits and pieces together, to be the first ones pointing out the DC-14 assassin was on the Causeway and at the Triskelion, to connect this to the intel community stories about a ghost-operative called the Winter Soldier, to start setting up the photo comparisons. The idea that if they did it first, they'd be able to steer. 

"At the time," Lorraine picks up, "this being prior to Sergeant Barnes' arrival in New York, we had no idea how much time we'd have, but since best estimates were that he wouldn't be easy to find, we went with having at least a year. It was less than that before he arrived in New York, but since that didn't lead to immediate publicity, moot point. We're still running and guiding the whole thing, and we basically will until there's no point anymore, but so far it's been pretty successful." 

Matías takes a sip of his latte, like taking a deep breath. "So you've put out the conspiracy theories," he says, just to be absolutely clear. "The positive ones, anyway." 

"We're origin point for basically any and all theories that are broadly correct," Mimi confirms, "and we tend to co-opt both ones that have correct details but the wrong slant and correct the slant, or ones that have the right slant but the wrong details, and attack or discredit straight-up malignant ones. My term," she adds, mouth quirking into a half smile, "but I kinda think they're malignant. Four or five have definitely looked like ex-HYDRA agitation, and those ones we traced to origin and propagation and passed that info on." 

"There are advantages to Mr Stark being so close to Col Rhodes," Lorraine agrees. "We can do that and stay 'anonymous source'." 

"Roy is our 4chan Spelunker, for which by the way everyone should be eternally grateful because there is no physical way to pay someone enough," Mimi says. Roy rolls his eyes, but only a little, and with a half-smile of his own as he shakes his head. 

"It's not that bad," he says, mostly to Matías. "The trick is to just let it roll off. The hard part is keeping up with everyone's tricks for figuring out who other people are - that's part of what I needed to be here for last night, someone was showing off something new and I needed to figure out if it was a threat. I also do 4chan support for a few of the other projects, since I'm there anyway. The nice thing is you don't have to maintain a persistent identity to be effective, although I've got one I've been running since the beginning. Everyone's pretty convinced I'm ex-SHIELD." 

"Well," Matías says, because he can't not, "you look a bit young but since I can't leave an obvious hook like that hanging - _are_ you ex-SHIELD?" 

Roy rewards the effort with a quick flash of a grin. "Nah," he says. "But my brother went to college with a guy who went into SHIELD, and now he's doing private sector, and he was willing to give me a few tips." 

"Really," Matías says, and apparently can't keep the scepticism out of his voice. The grin comes back again. 

"Yeah, really," he says. "He and my big brother are pretty close, brother was willing to vouch for me working here, I swore I'd be using it to make Captain America's life easier, there we go. The ex-SHIELD guys who are legit, who are half decent people - they're a _little_ attached to Captain Rogers. Just a little. You know, I'm not saying they'd do anything crazy like hand over their first-borns? But probably their kidneys for the asking, sure." 

Mimi glances upwards, but says, "Roy's job is monitoring, redirecting and bouncing stuff back up out of the internet's Id-Vortex. Meanwhile, I'm Reddit-central, which is where most of the generation goes - I'm QueenE-Burning on /r/conspiracy - " 

"No shit," Matías says, eyebrows going up, and Mimi looks incredibly pleased that he recognizes the name. But he has read some of her stuff, because it got linked to him. Maybe off Buzzfeed. He forgets. 

"Yup. Plus gregor262 on /r/octokraken, and a couple others people outside of Reddit don't usually know, even if they've read my work. My work-stations are colour-coded as aide-memoire." 

"I did wonder," Matías admits. "It was just so . . . comprehensive." 

"Easiest and most effective way to keep the streams from crossing - because holy crap being five different people on this level is intense," she says. "Two of them absolutely hate each other, too. Anyway. And then Ginger is our Shallow Web floater - they keep an eye on everything that gets up to the Facebook-and-Twitter level, and shepherd accordingly." 

"There's a pretty detailed brief in the monster packet you have waiting for you for after the launch," Lorraine says, "but the upshot is, we're actually having an observable effect, and in the direction we want." 

"The theories aren't widely believed," Mimi picks up, "but as you're apparently aware, they are pretty widely known, and ours - by which I mean the ones that have the slant and content we want - are by far the predominant ones. And other than QueenE, a lot of them aren't even maintained and sustained by us anymore. Limited Georgia, the one with the comprehensive facial analysis and sightings profile? She's an independent, for example - she's a journalism professor in Ohio, real name Edith Longer, and she got her first inklings off stuff gregor262 was tossing around, but most of her work is her own. It's turned out better than we expected." 

Matías nods slowly. It makes sense. Just reveal the truth, and then people - especially now, and especially with something like this - would just start finding their own reasons to disbelieve you, on the basis that anyone trying to tell them something official would be lying. But control the conspiracy end that everyone was looking to anyway, and do it slowly and over time, and what you controlled was the tone. The spin and the slant. 

And then when something gets revealed later, you have all kinds of people going, "ahah! Exactly like I knew!" and remembering that time they read that story. You end up confirming them, validating them, instead of challenging them. And the angle you want people to lean is already out there, already familiar, so you're not teaching them anything new. 

"That's . . . brilliant," Matías says, aloud, and adds, "and also terrifying." 

"I like him," Mimi says to Lorraine, "he's quick. Yeah," she says, to him, with a slightly apologetic grin for the remark - checking, Matías thinks, to see if it's okay to tease this soon. "The only reason it's not even more terrifying is that, I will be upfront with you: doing it to the level we're doing it is a _lot_ of work." 

"So much work," Roy chimes in, and puts his head on the table on his arms. "So much work," he tells the table. 

"Part of my end is making sure that they both still look organic," Ginger says, looking like someone who's having to work to make themself speak up. "Because it's so easy to not. And I mean the people we need to carry the thread are the ones that are most likely to twig. Like - you know that author, a couple years ago, who had like that huge book contract and huge publicity and movie all ready to go and got arrested for fraud instead?" 

That had been a mess, and Matías does remember, and nods. It'd been one of those "you couldn't make this up" messes, where one week someone's got one of those books about to come out that's a hit before it's even on sale, complete with a movie already in development - and then the next week it turns out she's being arrested for felony fraud and being sued for plagiarism too. Plus other stuff. And it turned out she'd been something like three different people in three different communities and left a burning wreckage - metaphorically anyway - in all of them before moving on, dumping that identity and making up a new one. 

"Well, that was me," Ginger said, looking awkward. "Not the author - I mean, it was me and my friends that did the slush work to show she was who we thought she was and had done the things she had, and when it turned out to be way, way bigger than we thought we were the ones who took it to the cops. And I mean the stuff she got arrested for is just the big stuff. She's a horrible person - I know people who sent her a new computer and bought her plane tickets and stuff, because she was really big in our online circles before she fucked everyone over, cut her losses and reinvented herself over somewhere else. Um. Sorry, language. Anyway. It was just little stuff that tipped us off to start with," Ginger continues, looking abashed and shrugging. "And then we started digging and we were right. So that's why I'm doing the cover for Simon's paternity: this is my jam. And it's hard to pull this stuff off. It's _really hard_ to avoid tells at the level we're at, and you can't get the effect we are without being at that depth." 

"I don't think I can quite imagine," Matías admits, and gets quick grins for his honesty, "but I'm definitely up to being able to guess at how much I'm not imagining, and believing it." 

"Honestly, for most stuff, I wouldn't be willing to do this," Mimi says, baldly. "But I have some pretty, um, emphatic opinions about Nazis, and people they fuck up, and governments sucking, so in this case, fine. I'm here for being five people for a while." 

"Ditto," Roy says, lifting his head enough to rest his chin on his arms. Ginger shrugs their shoulders. 

"My dad was on the Insight kill-list," they say, quietly. "Along with . . . almost everyone over twenty I knew. That's a lot of people who're really important to me saved because . . .of this. And it's election coming up, and who knows what after that, and yeah I think if they - I think it's important." 

Matías can't exactly disagree. 

 

They talk for a while longer, and then let Mimi and Ginger get back to work, and Roy go home and - apparently - work on resetting his internal clock again. 

Lorraine says good-bye at about twenty to noon, delivering Matías back to the office that still feels like it can't possibly be his, and then disappearing after showing him how to boot up the computer. 

It turns out the reason he couldn't see a keyboard, and in fact the reason that many of the desks he's seen today are missing a keyboard, is that by default everyone gets the built-in touch-surface stuff that Stark Industries hasn't quite started marketing to the general world. 

"If you want a keyboard, please put in a request to Facilities," Lorraine says. "Right down to exactly what kind you want. But frankly a lot of people turn out to like the touch-surface stuff, and especially the trackpad, and in addition to having keyboards available we do have what basically amounts to a sticker that marks out where the keys _are_ if you happen to touch-type. And the layout is completely personalizable." 

She leaves Matías feeling like he's on _Star Trek_ , except that the keyboards are actually sleeker and much more futuristic-looking than _Trek_ managed. At least as far as he can remember. His uncle used to watch the show - it was never his thing. 

Lorraine's absence leaves him sort of feeling like the one time he'd been stupid enough to get caught in a rip tide at fourteen and ended up way farther out than he'd ever intended to go, baffled as to what happened, and kind of scared he wouldn't be able to get back to shore. Trying to get a handle on that, he sits down at the computer.

He manages to pull up his calendar and his "message centre" which combines email and - well, everything else. Some of it brings up questions about his logins and choices for stuff he doesn't even recognize the name of, so he hits "later". The calendar, mail and his own own phone texts tell him at roughly the same time that Yolanda wants him to stop by her office at about one-thirty. He tosses an email towards Deb about that and if he could come by after it for the promised help sorting things out. 

All stuff that might get him something like oriented. Even so, Matías still feels like someone who just jumped into a fast flowing deep river. It hasn't hit the rapids, so as long as he keeps his head above water he might be able to sort shit out before he's battered to death or drowns, but it's still all a bit much. 

He texts as much to Ofelia. 

Five minutes later he gets back a picture from that time a few years ago they'd gone on a cruise that had stopped in Norway. They'd gone into port for a day or so and among other things, he'd gone cliff-jumping. 

It had been a slightly - okay extremely - stupid thing to do, but he hadn't actually died and how many other people could say they'd done that? 

The picture she sends is the one of him clinging to a rock afterwards as the waves are still hitting him, grinning like a maniac. 

He sends her back a gif of a cat looking aloof, but he takes the point. He does kind of do this stuff to himself. 

Just about as he's thinking he should actually grab some kind of food, unless he wants to keel over sometime this afternoon, there's a light tap at his door; at his slightly flustered, "Uh, come in?" because he's really not used to that yet, it opens to reveal Mimi with a small box, her tablet under her arm, and a drinks tray with two slightly translucent cold drinks of some kind in plastic cups. 

"On the basis that everyone has to try Gregoire's Cornish pasties at least once," Mimi announces, brightly, "if only so you can definitively tell people you don't actually like them, and ditto the lavender lemonade," and she holds up the tray, "I come bearing at least most of lunch, and an offer to help you sort out what the hell all those things you probably just hit 'later' on are on the computer." 

Then she grins. "Plus initiatory water-cooler talk from the next level down and thus, someone who isn't the HR partner and isn't at least partially trying to balance Appropriate Professionalism and not making you run for the hills with her desire to give you all you need to actually do the job." 

Matías laughs, a bit ruefully, because that's a fair assessment. He makes an open gesture with his hands. "Please come in," he says. "And I will try anything edible once, so thanks, and I owe you a lunch. Although I don't want to take up your time - ?" 

Mimi comes in and closes the door behind her. She waves that away with the hand holding the box, moving to sit down on one of the armchairs as Matías gets up. "Nah," she says. "I mean you can get one of the minions to do it, but I can get it done about three times as fast and with less annoyance." 

Matías settles into the other chair and says, "Fire away, I guess," and Mimi beams at him. 

Then, to his surprise, she tilts her head to one side and says, "JARVIS?" with her voice projected slightly louder, like she's talking to someone on the other side of the room. Or in the ceiling. 

To his greater surprise, she gets an answer. 

"Yes, Miss Lajeune?" 

The voice does sound like an old style butler. It isn't just the British accent, although of course that helps. But there's more to it. It's something about how everything ended up shaped, the stresses and the intonation, even in just the three words. It's almost uncanny. You can almost picture it. 

Also uncanny is the way it comes from just about everywhere in the room, as far as Matías can tell. He definitely couldn't identify the speaker position if his life depended on it. It's like it's from everywhere. 

"Have space to do me a quick favour?" she asks. Matías notes that it's a genuine question, like the answer _no_ is a possibility she's considered and will absolutely accept if it comes up. That these definitely aren't just trigger-words or phrases, meant to put a program into motion, not - he thinks back to the feeling of being on something like _Star Trek_ \- a rote _Computer, initiate protocol_ , or anything like that. Mimi's asking someone something. 

"Of course, Miss Lajeune," the disembodied voice that is apparently JARVIS responds. "Presumably you wish to expedite the further profile, function and detail arrangements on Mr Ortiz' account?" 

. . . Mimi's asking someone who can apparently do a lot of information synthesis and prediction to do something that they'd already guessed she'd want them to do. That's . . . definitely unnerving. Matías is officially unnerved. 

"If you would, that would be fantastic," Mimi says, and looks at Matías. "Variation on given names okay?" she asks and he blinks at her, pulling himself out of his thoughts, then nods. 

"Yeah, great," he says. "Middle names are Angel and Ernesto if more variables help." 

"Thank you so much, JARVIS," Mimi finishes for him, passing Matías his pasty. 

"Very good, Miss Lajeune," says the voice, and then somehow there's a definite sense, somehow, that the owner of the voice is . . . gone. Like a pop in the air or something that Matías can't quite hear well enough to identify, but nonetheless gives him the really strong impression that whatever had been talking to them isn't anymore. 

"This way we skip all the back-and-forth and waiting while stuff recalibrates," Mimi concludes, like a closing explanation, "and you'll basically be able to sit down and fingerprint-pass into everything, plus an instruction doc. JARVIS has all the permissions." 

She's opening the box as she says this, and passing him one of the lavender lemonades. The Cornish pasty turns out to be a kind of pastry filled with ground beef and vegetables and also turns out to smell amazing. Lavender lemonade turns out to be something Matías can take or leave, and which would make Ofelia bang her head on the table and mutter about hipsters. 

In the interest of not looking like a total idiot with his mouth hanging open, as Matías takes the offered pasty he says, "So - you're one of the people the AI talks to, then?" - of course managing to time it right as Mimi's taking a bite of her pasty. She nods while her mouth's full, and reaches for her lavender lemonade. 

"Since about a week after 'I am Iron Man'," she says after she swallows. "Believe it or not, I actually managed to get hired as admin support about two months before Stark's captivity in Afghanistan. Really entry-tier, fetching coffee and other menial shit, but I needed the job and even then the company paid well and had way better benefits than my other options, so I sucked it up and considered myself lucky. Then about a week after Stane's adventures in being a super-villain crashed before they got off the ground, a whole crapload of people in our department were out on their asses in the _first_ purge, basically because they were Stane's people and weirdly Stark didn't want much to do with them." 

She says that with a kind of mock innocent surprise, and Matías snorts through his own mouthful: the pasty tastes as good as it smelled. 

"Oh," Mimi adds. "Interrupting myself: you will totally hear people around here talking about 'the Purges', and since otherwise it sounds kind of like we're some kind of, I dunno, Soviet throwback or something - those are the three times that a _lot_ of people got fired, often _emphatically_ , sometimes to be met at the door by cop cars. First one was after Stane, under old HR when Potts was still having to run the company _through_ Stark." 

"And I think Lorraine said something about the second one being after SHIELD planted the Black Widow as Natalie Rushman," Matías offers, having had his first couple bites and deciding that he is definitely a Cornish pasty convert, and now wanting to feel like he's not totally lost and floundering in this conversation. 

Mimi takes time for another bite herself as he says it, nodding. "Right," she agrees. "And that one was epic, trust me. Very polite, but epic. That's when we got the current HR bosses and when Yolanda took over PR, and we got de los Santos over at Legal. Then the third one was after Insight and on the one hand it was fucking _heavy_ and on the other hand frankly considering everybody knew the people that the HYDRA plants killed and shit we kind of all pitched in to the point where Hill actually told people to cut it out, stop carrying on their own investigations, and let her do her job because she's better at it. But anyway. The point is, that first one was actually kind of the worst because it was a total shake-up, right, _and_ Stark was still CEO and also starting his total breakdown." 

Matías observes, "That doesn't sound like fun," in the way you say the same thing to someone who just got diagnosed with cancer. 

"It was hell," Mimi agrees cheerfully, finishing off her pasty. "But in terms of JARVIS talking to me, story goes: so a bunch of us got preemptive-promotions - you know, that thing where they stick you with the work before they actually give you the title or the pay upgrade." 

She rolls her eyes. Matías makes a sympathetic face. He's had that kind of "promotion" and it is, in fact, shit. If you're lucky it gives you a little bit of leverage about demanding salary once they give in, or threatening to leave if they don't, but that's if you're lucky. 

"And then right after _that_ ," she goes on, "Stark decides to do the Expo, which for the record was a _fucking gongshow._ And I ended up in charge of shit I was so not either qualified to be in charge of or being paid enough to handle, without enough authority to do what I needed to to get it done, either." She picks up her lemonade and leans back, crossing one leg over the other. "I just about quit, my hand to god, especially after this one meeting that got nowhere, involved two of us being shouted at twice for shit that was the fault of the guy doing the shouting, and - yeah it was just not good. I went to cry in my office and was about to start updating my resume."

Mimi takes a sip of her lemonade and shrugs. "Then suddenly the wall was asking me to explain _my_ plan for on-site security management during construction. Which I did, because I was too startled to do anything else - and then that afternoon I ended up I in a meeting with Ms Potts. Met her yet?" 

"No," Matías says. "I've met Yolanda, Leo, Lorraine, and the other people I've met in the office today, but no one outside that, yet." 

"You will," Mimi says, with absolute confidence. "She takes an Interest in anything to do with Rogers - although actually I personally think it's more of an interest in anything to do with Barnes. Not sure why." She shrugs again. "She's super-nice, and also the most terrifying human I've ever encountered and I've met both the Black Widow _and_ worked with Ms Hill for a weekend, so that's saying something." 

"Who's second?" Matías can't help but ask, given that lead. Mimi gestures like she's weighing two different things in her hands and it's wobbling towards equal. 

"Black Widow's sort of stealth terrifying - like she's totally nice and normal and charismatic and then two hours later you realize you were telling her things you normally only tell your best friend and would totally have trusted her with your car keys. Hill just perpetually radiates this absolutely diamond-hard sense that she knows exactly what's going on, exactly what she's going to do, exactly what needs to happen, and you can either get on board or she'll roll right over you. I haven't personally met de los Santos, so I can't compare there." Her mouth quirks. "And Potts is most terrifying because Hill and de los Santos both work for her and Black Widow thinks she's brilliant and she went from being a temp PA to running this company while taking down three evil masterminds and saving everyone's life at the Expo on the way. And then she's really nice. And it's like: who does and can do _all of that_ , go through all of that shit, and is still _really nice?_ It's fucking terrifying to me." She pauses. "Pardon the language. I, um - that will happen again. It's like Roy trying not to come in for forty-eight hour stretches? I try not to swear. But I'm not good at it." 

Matías solemnly replies, "I think I've heard most of the words before." And she grins.

"Anyway. After that meeting with Ms Potts, I shortly had new job titles and salary backdated to the start of the project." This time when she shrugs, she's put her drink down and has both palms flat facing up. "I have no idea why JARVIS started talking to me, other than apparently he liked my plan for security better than anyone else's and was _super_ done with the fighting. And I'll admit, there's just enough of the insecure teenager left in my soul that I don't want to ask in case it takes away the sparkle from being one of the chosen few. But the upshot is that I can sometimes do stuff like expediting system stuff." 

"Huh," Matías says, absorbing this. He remembers noting that it seemed like she was taking the potential for a _no_ into account. "Ever get a negative answer?" 

"Mmhm," Mimi replies. "Couple of times when I tried to get his attention, I've gotten regretfully informed that unless someone would die or large amounts of property damage would ensue without his help, whatever I wanted would have to wait, and couple of other times he answered but then said he was too busy to do the specific thing. Which I figure is fair. I'm not sure what that _means_ , other than all but one of those times I did find out later that there was big shit going on somewhere, but really?" She shrugs. "I'm so not his job. That he's willing to do me favours at all is amazing." 

Matías hesitates - but then gives in, because the question is right there, hanging in the air. So he asks, "Is the JARVIS system . . . sentient?" 

Because this seems like a big deal question, but at the same time . . . she's not really acting like it is, or at least Matías can't see that she is, and he wants to figure out where this stuff stands.

Mimi presses her lips together, but at the same time the corners of her eyes crinkle up. She glances upwards. "Okay," she says. This time her voice is absolutely full of the kind of deprecating self-directed amusement that Matías is really familiar with. "Here's the thing." She looks at him levelly, but her eyes are still amused and bright. 

"When you're asking _me_ that question, if I'm going to give you an actual yes or no answer, or anything like it, you're signing up for at least a half-hour preparatory dissertation on 'what the hell do we even mean by sentience, or do we mean _sapience_ and what's the difference and why does that difference matter, does sapience exist, how does it occur, is this even a meaningful question' - and you probably have more than enough things to think about today so I think that would be mean."

He has to chuckle at that, and knows it comes out a little strained. "Okay," he says. "I mean, you're not wrong."

Mimi smiles at him, but goes on, "The teal-deer - that is, too-long, didn't-read, the summary version - is: _I_ definitely choose to treat the situation like Stark's extremely-personal-assistant-valet-butler-whatever just happens to be kind of wearing this building like a suit and inhabits a certain set of parameters and sequences of code, but I also basically feel like that's what humans are, our computer systems are just made of meat. So like: yes, I assume JARVIS is a person just like I am, just with a way different physical manifestation, and absolutely nothing I have run into thus far convinces me I'm wrong, plus _everything about_ how _Stark_ acts and talks about JARVIS makes more sense if you assume that." 

Matías had actually been thinking that already: that everything Lorraine and Deb both seemed to find exasperating and inexplicable about how Stark answered their questions about the system made perfect sense if you assumed _he_ considered JARVIS to be a fully independent entity and just wasn't going to come out and fill in the gaps for them if they didn't get there themselves. 

Mimi looks thoughtful as she goes on. "In terms of everyone else - Deb finds the idea super-unnerving, Lorraine doesn't know what she thinks about it, Roy and Ginger seem to be following my lead, and Yolanda just . . .gets on with life and leaves that kind of thing to philosophers and priests, and that's a direct quote. And since it's not exactly something you bring up at the actual water-cooler, I have no idea how other people feel about it.

"But," she finishes, rolling up the now-empty paper liner the pasty had sat on and sitting back in her chair, lemonade in hand, "in terms of doing anything with the Avengers? It seriously helps to just assume JARVIS is kind of like a household manager. He won't always jump in, or anything, but he will sometimes, if he thinks there's benefit to it. Plus - oh man, so do you ever like, read old mysteries or upstairs-downstairs novels or whatever?" 

"I . . . _Downton Abbey_ is one of my comfort-watches," Matías admits and Mimi says _hah!_ but with a grin. 

"Oh my god I love you already," she says, "anyway - that's actually very useful with this. Because JARVIS 100% obeys the convention that a true butler has no idea where anyone is or what they're doing until they've decided if they want it to be known, and will totally do the 'I'm sorry Mr X is not at home' thing even if you've seen Mr X in the window, except like, adjust for context. Or the equivalent." 

She waves a hand. "I can't give you specific reasons why I get the feeling, but I do seriously get the feeling that JARVIS is _really_ protective, not just of Stark and Potts, but of all of the Avengers - _and_ Col Rhodes. And I also get the feeling that within whatever parameters he feels are appropriate, he is absolutely doing whatever's there to make their lives easier - just, like, as invisibly as possible, and following his own set of rules. And you know, that old-school stuff is a pretty good way of thinking about it," she goes on, thoughtfully. "JARVIS is the butler - and then Harker and Koerner are the valets. Koerner is Stark's PA," she adds. "Mostly _Janine_ to like Lorraine and up, and _Koerner_ to the rest of us. She'll pretty clearly indicate which she's cool with whenever you meet her. We're not supposed to laugh when Stark refers to her as his Vulcan first officer but _frankly_ ," Mimi glances upwards, "well, there's worse descriptions. Just a really _patient_ Vulcan." 

"And Harker?" Matías asks, because he can't help being curious now. 

"Hugh Harker," Mimi replies, "and yes that is totally his name, was _born_ to be where he is, and he loves it. He's also apparently a great time at parties, although we kinda have different circles when it comes to parties, so I wouldn't know. The other ones you'll want to know are Thi Nguyen, who's Eva de los Santos' PA, and Monique Grant, Hill's - who came with her from SHIELD and is so beautiful she could model for millions it's insane. That's basically everyone where you're more dealing with the NCO to their officer than anything else - I'm sure you'll get to know everyone's eventually." 

And here she grins at him again. "Also Grant can probably kill you with her little finger. She used to work for Nick Fury, apparently." 

"Did SI just sort of vacuum up all the worthwhile SHIELD survivors?" Matías asks, and Mimi snorts some laughter around her mouthful of lemonade, but nods. 

"More or less," she says. "All of them that were willing to work for someone else and didn't go straight into the other alphabet soup agencies." She shrugs. 

Matías takes a second while she finishes the last of her drink, and settles his thoughts - taking the moment to shove all the huge big complicated ones that didn't have to do with his _actual job_ over to the side, and then sort through the others nice and quick. "Okay," he says, after that pause, "so hit me: how do _you_ think things are set for the weekend launch?" 

Mimi seems to consider that for a minute or two, switching which leg is crossed over which under her skirt and leaning forward to rest her chin in her hand. "I think as long as you're decently up to taking on someone else's plan and running with it, you'll be fine," she says, judiciously. "I know they were prepped to go as a stand-in team and Deb is _good_. Plus I mean you're basically telling the world that the day has finally come and they can buy Cap merch again - let's be real, that's not a super difficult sell."

"You know, it's been what, four years?" Matías asks and Mimi nods. 

"Just about four years since the settlement," she confirms.

"And about two years since he did anything in public . . . " he goes on but Mimi covers her face with her hands.

"Oh god and yet," Mimi says. "And yet. Hamish downstairs monitors a bunch of shit, make sure nobody's getting above a little Etsy shop - because apparently Cap was specific about not caring about those - and he's _always_ busy. We've had to fend off the Mouse a couple times, for crying out loud." 

"On what grounds were they trying - ?" Matías asks, staring and she shrugs again. 

"Some thing in the Sixties," she says. "I just remember Hamish swearing a lot and always being on the phone to Legal. So yeah I think as far as this weekend, you're going to be super busy, but you're fine. After that, I have no idea - there might be Big Plans going on, we might still be in the same sort of wait-and-see that we've got up till now." She purses her lips. " _You're_ a new and unexpected element, for that matter - I mean, what, Lorraine went to like a party with a friend of yours, and found out you were looking for a job, and then - ?" 

"Yeah I'd actually kinda marked off the next couple weeks for moping around about how I was never going to be employable again, after the trial," Matías admits, blandly, and Mimi actually bursts into peals of laughter. "But yeah, then my best friend apparently met Lorraine at a party." 

"Lorraine's good at that," Mimi says. "She networks like most people breathe. I think she might even warp reality around her. But yeah so I dunno, maybe even the Powers That Be don't know where they're gonna go from that. So maybe you'll get a few months to sort everything out, they just jumped on getting you on board because the opportunity was there, and it is better to have you here from before launch, even if by just a couple days." 

Which is a bit reassuring, Matías thinks. Even if she's not right up in the decision-making, he feels like she'd get at least a sense of it if there were big rumblings, and she's got good points. 

They chat for a while longer before Mimi gathers up the garbage and leaves Matías not really sure if he feels like he's got a better footing than he did before. 

 

The rest of the day does at least hold back on throwing any more curve-balls, at least. The meeting with Yolanda amounts to her checking up to make sure that he's met everyone she thinks he needs to and that the morning went well, and that he's meeting up with Deb to tackle things, and true to Lorraine's word making sure he knows that he's supposed to eat lunch, take his breaks, and ask for help if he needs it. 

He then spends the next three hours with Deb. 

The work, at least, is familiar enough to be reassuring. She does take about twenty minutes worth of a break at one point to walk her daughter through taking an infant's temperature on the phone, with the kind of patience that reminds Matías of his aunt, but otherwise Deb's one of the most efficient people he's ever met. He honestly suspects that with anyone else what they go through would take twice as long, but he doesn't feel like he's missing anything, or like there's any problem with his grasp of what the next ten days need from him, at least. 

"I know this has got to feel like juggling eggs on a floating log going down a river," Deb says, as they're wrapping up. "But you seem to be a pretty good juggler, and after this is over we'll definitely have time to go back and get some solid ground under your feet - and the river's not that cold. I mean, the upside is we're just telling the world they can buy Captain America stuff legally again, so it's not like we have to overcome huge obstacles to get attention." 

"Mimi said the same thing," Matías notes, and Deb chuckles. 

"The girl's _good_ at analysis," she says. "I'm glad we found somewhere we could keep her where she could put that to use, because she's just a bit too impatient to actually work with clients or on externally-focused projects - by which I mean she has a temper." Deb looks amused, but kind of fond as well. "To her credit I have never seen her lose her temper with anyone, but I was here the day she actually bit through her tongue to keep from yelling at a collaborator on something we were setting up, and had to leave the room and then go to the infirmary-floor to get it looked at." 

She glances at her watch and sighs. "And I'd actually say hey, this is a great time for me to give you some impressions on all the rest of your team, but I actually have to get going, so we'll leave that for another day - shouldn't be too critical for the next few days anyway. But if I can give you some advice?" she asks, as Matías takes the hint and gets up. 

"Please, I'd absolutely value any advice you want to give me," he says, and means it. 

"Don't stay late tonight," she says. "And leave the files here. Go home, eat properly, do something else with your head to let all this stuff settle, get some physical exercise even if it's just a walk, and go to bed early. You'll have plenty of chances to get Yolanda on your case for self-care, believe me, and here and now with us you do not have to prove you're keen and ready to go, okay? And that's me as someone who's been a lot of people's supervisor and manager talking, as much or more than me as a mom," she adds, mock tartly, but winks at him. 

"Thank you," Matías says, half-smiling, and he means it. 

 

It's hard to take her advice, but in the end he sells it to himself as a test: after all, he can use the results to see whether or not he _can_ take that kind of thing at face value, and find it out now, while he's still new and apologetic enough to smooth it over if he's wrong. 

He also spends about ten minutes just thinking about the massive . . . . he doesn't even know what to call it, the _thought_ that Stark's actually already managed to create a totally independently self-aware AI with its own personality and take on the world. Just that by itself. Never mind that this AI is apparently straight plugged into the Iron Man stuff, the entire Stark Industries machine, the . . . 

He thinks about the size of the thought and then like it's the biggest elephant in any room, ever, he throws a mental sheet on it and goes to bed. 

He'll think about it later.

**Author's Note:**

> nb: the situation Ginger describes is drawing inspiration from Various Epic Wanks of the Past, but I'd like to note that I totally had this mostly drafted and that part written BEFORE someone managed to try to put the Fix in on the NYT rankings for their terrible YA book and attendant drama, and Celeloriel and Adsartha can both attest this. >.>


End file.
